The assignee of the present application has been making and selling apparatus for sorting magnetic parts such as steel bottle caps for more than a year prior to the filing of this application. That apparatus comprises a sorting disc having a number of recesses for receiving such caps disposed about its periphery. A video inspection device is aligned with the sorting disc such that caps disposed in the recesses are momentarily aligned with the inspection device as the sorting disc is rotated. When the inspection device determines that a particular cap is defective, it passes a "reject" signal to a rotating reject disc. The reject disc comprises a number of individually-actuable electromagnets disposed about its periphery, and is located such that the linear speed of the electromagnets is equal to that of the recesses in the periphery of the sorting disc at a point at which the two discs are tangent. Accordingly, when a reject signal is supplied to one of the magnets on the reject disc, the corresponding cap is magnetically attracted thereto, so that as the discs continue to rotate the cap is withdrawn from its recess in the sorting disc, and is placed in a reject bin. Meanwhile, parts which are found suitable after inspection are removed from the sorting disc by mechanical fingers overlapping the disc and are supplied to a good parts bin, or to another processing operation. These parts are being processed at speeds up to and exceeding 2500 parts per minute.
While the device described has been found suitable for its intended purpose, and is capable of effective sorting of parts at very high rates, it is not suitable for sorting non-magnetic parts such as plastic or aluminum bottle caps. It would be desirable to provide such a sorting device which is also usable with plastic or aluminum parts to be sorted.